"Lexi". She heard someone call her name but she couldn't look back. They would try talking her out of her ridiculous decision. "Alexis, wait up", she sighed, knowing they wouldn't give up and turned around. "What?" she said in annoyance.
"Alexis, please. Think about this for a minute" her mother told her in her no-nonsense voice, "You can't just not get chemo anymore. You'll die".
Lexi sighed, annoyed that her mother was still trying to make all of her decisions for her. "Yes thank you for that blindingly obvious fact Mother. Of course I'll die, that's what happens when you get cancer".
Wendy gasped, "Lexi, don't think like that, the doctors will help you", she said, like she truly believed it.
"Mom, it's been two and a half years and no one has miraculously found a cure for Leukemia, don't expect me to hold out hope for something that won't happen anytime soon." Her family didn't understand. They weren't the ones with life-threatening illness. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life-which we both know isn't that long-stuck in a hospital. I'm 20 Mom, 20. I haven't had a normal life since I was diagnosed. I'm leaving and you can't stop me."
Lexi silently stared out the window of the cab. She jumped as her phone stared blaring Chopin's 'Funeral March'. "Ugh, go away" she whined as she ignored the call.
"Rough morning?" the driver asked.
"Rough year" she replied bluntly. "My mom tried to stop me from doing something I've been wanting to do for a while".
"You can't let your Mom dictate your every move, you should go out and do whatever you want."
She thought for a second, before making up her mind. "You know what? You're right." And with that, she paid him, and stepped out of the car onto the curb. There was something about New York that she always loved. It was either the architecture or the bustling of the people-the ability to blend in and be a no one in a sea of everyone's or maybe it was something else. Lexi wasn't sure but in that moment she knew that this was what she was meant to do. She was supposed to be here.